Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

:lol:

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

And that one carries more weight than any other review database in what way?

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Metacritic only includes legitimate, qualified critics, there's none of the fanboy junk like Ain't It Cool News.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Don't let Harry fool you. Ain't It Cool News has produced at least two genuinely qualified critics: Drew "Moriarty" McWeeny (now at HitFix) and Jeremy "Mr. Beaks" Smith (still writing for AICN, albeit somewhat sporadically), and reader reviews don't go on the Tomatometer.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Looks like this will surprise and finish #1 for the weekend...excellent news!

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

FWIW, there are some movies where I would give the "non-legitimate" critics, as you put it, more credence than the ones others deem legit. The only thing that makes some legit, it seems, is if some major publication gives them a spot.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

If there were a lot of legitimate critics that weren't dumbasses, this might matter to me.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Moved to reviews thread.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Right now it sits at 74 at Metacritic after 40 reviews. 32 reviews are at 75 or higher.

What does this say?....Don't take the 74 at face value

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

It has a 74% on metacritic (roughly a 3.7 out of 5 average) and a 7.8 out of 10 on RottenTomatoes (roughly a 3.9 out of 5 average). Similarly -- it has a 92.5% positive rating on on Metacritic (4 of 41 reviews being "mixed", the rest marked positive) versus a 93% on Rottentomatoes (91% and a 7.9 average going off Top Critics only.)

They really aren't all that different.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

i thought this was altogether an incredible flick. Those robbery scenes were unnervingly intense, giving Michael Mann a run for his money. It's notches below 'The Departed' by avenue of inner-city organized crime vs cop-play, but gives fans of the genre something to keep entertained.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

I loved it. Renner was awesome. Hamm was great. Affleck sold it in front and behind the camera. It's not the greatest crime drama I've ever seen, but it has an intimacy to it that a lot of others lack. So good to see Gone Baby Gone wasn't a fluke.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

I thought this was one of the best films I've seen so far this year. Had a really good pace to it and the story was good, I was really not wanting it to end. The bank robbery scenes were incredibly well done I thought as well, very intense. Affleck really surprised me with his directing and acting skills in this movie. Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner were great in this too.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

So...when I see a movie that comes out and it's an adaptation of a book usually...I want to read the book too. So...just went to Amazon and checked out Prince of Thieves, the book which this film is based on. Turns out...there's a new edition of it w/ the film's title. It also says previously known as Prince of Thieves...did they just literally change the book title or is it still known as Prince of Thieves and this is just to show off the film?

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

not sure, but it sounds to me like that "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire" type thing.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

how come nobody is praising blake lively's performance? i thought she was great.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

I agree, but I do think Affleck went back to the same well he got Amy Ryan's Gone Baby Gone character from.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

i really don't think she did anyting new for the baby mama, heavy makeup, drug-addled whore character.

sure it was a departure from what, Gossip Girl?, but nothing on the level as the aforementioned Ryan character in Gone Baby Gone.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

This, could have placed any of hundreds of actresses in the exact same role. It was a non-descript performance.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

agreed.

her push-up bra looked good. Other than that, there was really nothing to note. She was very much a secondary character in this.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

The Town is grossly overrated at anything above 50% (as if those critic tabulator scores mean anything).

Gone Baby Gone is one of my favorite crime dramas of the past decade, but The Town is nothing more than an overextended cliche-filled mess of a film with logical gaps so wide you can drive an armored truck or getaway minivan through them.

Why a film would give away the twist that Affleck is the bank robber/hostage taker and the new love interest of the hostage in the trailer is beyond me. Furthermore, why not make it at least plausible as something that can even happen in the world of the film if you are going to do it at all. There is no conceivable way short of that woman getting short term memory loss and remembering absolutely nothing about the bank robbery that she does not recognize Affleck's voice. Especially, after they make a point of it in the film to show us how Affleck gently, but directly speaks to her in close proximity in his normal voice to calm her down and such. The exact same tone/voice he uses to speak to her every other time they are together post-robbery.

Then the ludicrous sequence at the outdoor restaurant table with Jim/Jem was another doozy. Yeah, because no one would notice a giant green tattoo on a man's neck when he is but inches away from you. I just sat there the entire time waiting for Ben to put his arm on the back of his neck in some "bro way" until he finally did.

Also, the end cuts the metaphorical balls off the villain (florist) by rendering his earlier threats (the sole motivating factor for the film's important change of heart, one last job moment) completely devoid of any real menace or meaning. If it was so easy to do what happens at the end of the film why not just do it earlier? If it was only a 2 man operation and there is no risk retribution against the originally threatened party then why take the threat seriously when it was made? Why not just do what was done at the end of the film the next day or some time before the job he didn't want to do?

Hamm's character was nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a "law man." A watered down version of Pacino in Heat or even Bale in Public Enemies. He was about as meaningful as any one of the anonymous pissed off law men in Bonnie and Clyde. And the whole "Time to send around his picture" line had me hysterical. They orchestrate all that they did, but never thought to show anyone from the Boston PD the guy's picture before that point. Not even the PD posted outside the apartment?!?

Too much crap like that ruined the movie. Chris Cooper was brilliant in his limited screen time and Blake Lively was the best out of the main cast. At least she got to show some emotion, be it rage, sadness, or desperation. A totally different character than in Gone Baby Gone. She is far more self-aware and vulnerable, which is why she stood out in the film among the cliche boys (hot head, conflicted robber, white bread/other side of the tracks love interest).

I wish they cut the entire love story out of the film and made it a straight "last job" picture and focused on the friends and family and the intricacies of those relationships and the context of them (both hidden and known) instead of shoehorning that completely illogical love story shit into what could have been an excellent heist film.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

This isn't a twist that occurs late in the film -- this is all established in the first act.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

Strong film. I do agree with some of Bamboo's points. It's been a few yrs since I've seen it but GBG is probably the better film. Town really could've used a bit more time, some of the existing scenes even seemed cut short. Some good stuff in there though.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

I know. I didn't really mean "twist," I should have just said "plot point" I suppose.

At the very least, leaving the film exactly as it is. If the trailers do not show the love story then there would have been a bit more drama in the first act. At the very least, when Dougy says he'll take care of the hostage and not Jem who seems intent on killing her, we would at least have not known he was going to actually fall in love with her, which the trailers tell us.

The film could have kept the audience in the dark about Dougy's intentions. Is he simply pumping her for information the entire time and keeping his enemy close? And we'd watch a relationship form. The trailer strips all that away. We know where things are going the second he locks eyes with her in the laundromat. Perhaps this is why I came away hating the love story so much because there was nothing dramatic about it (thanks to the trailer and the logical flaws). I mean, there is no tension in the whole "will she realize it is him?" set-up if the film completely shoots it down right away by not having her even suspect it is him and being the most oblivious woman on the planet.

I even started to over-think the film as I watched it for its own benefit. Hoping all along that we'd find out she knew from the start it was him, but had some ulterior motive for playing along or at least was simply playing along out of fear or something. Instead, they just made her a dumb character and tossed all logic to the wind with regard to her recognizing the voice.

Re: Ben Affleck to direct and star in "The Town"
 

:thumbsup: Absolutely, thats pretty much what I posted in the review thread. I'm shocked by the people here gushing over the movie, calling it "incrediblle" & what not. Have they actually seen a crime film other than Heat before.