Films you've seen recently and would recommend WITH reservations

Corpsey.

Well-known member
Good will hunting is amazing. Its exactly the movie two idiots would make when imaging how it must be to give up keg stands and be wicked smart
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm a big fan of Matt Damon. He's solid. Bourne trilogy, The Martian, etc.

Ben Affleck is somehow repulsive but he did star in Gone Girl, the greatest movie of the 21st century.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm a big fan of Matt Damon. He's solid. Bourne trilogy, The Martian, etc.

Ben Affleck is somehow repulsive but he did star in Gone Girl, the greatest movie of the 21st century.

Have you seen that thing where there are loads of different gangsters trying to kill a witness who is in the suite at the top of the hotel? Ben Affleck plays a cool sort of Tarantino-esque gangster and it's the worst bit of miscasting I've ever seen. There is an out-take where he has to pot a pool ball and look cool at the same time and he fails terribly at both about fifteen times in a row. It's the worst thing he's been in since Good Will Hunting.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also, Ben Affleck did star in Gone Girl, but he also directed Gone Baby Gone, which is actually good... I find it just impossible to believe that he was behind the camera telling Morgan Freeman what to do, it doesn't make any sense.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The American Friend

... plot gets a bit messy toward the end, but can't say much against it beyond that. Gorgeous looking film and Hopper and Ganz are brilliant. Really intriguing take on the Tom Ripley character too, particularly having only seen Matt Damon's version.


I just saw this for the first time maybe a month ago, really enjoyed it.

Tom Ripley as a crustpunk.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I liked The Talented Mr Ripley with Matt Damon more than I remember liking Purple Noon with Alain Delon, but its been a while since I've seen the latter so maybe my opinion is subject to change.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also, Ben Affleck did star in Gone Girl, but he also directed Gone Baby Gone, which is actually good... I find it just impossible to believe that he was behind the camera telling Morgan Freeman what to do, it doesn't make any sense.

Wait up @Corpsey, what did I do to get the angry face? Don't you find it surprising that Baffleck is capable of directing a film? There are some actors who you think "yeah, they could move to behind the camera" in the same way as you see some football players and think "when they retire from playing they could be part of the coaching staff of a team or even head coach" - and some you just can't. Not cos they're bad players, but Paul Gascoigne or, I dunno, Theo Walcott say, both really good players in their chosen roles but I simply cannot see them changing to a position where they have to plan the whole game and select a team to bring their vision to life.

And I thought that Ben Affleck was that type of actor, I wouldn't have picked him out as someone who could or would make that change. But he did and fair enough, on the evidence I've seen, he did it well.

But I'm actually a bit mystified as to why you are so angry? As I see it, the first possibility is that it was so obvious to you that he would be a great director that, the very fact that I couldn't see it right off before he'd even done it has enraged you... the second is, you think Gone Baby Gone was terrible and the brute fact of my having praised it has caused you to see red.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Calm down mate it was a humourous angry face cos you slagged off 'Gone Girl', which you're well within your rights to do.
 

luka

Well-known member
Good will hunting is amazing. Its exactly the movie two idiots would make when imaging how it must be to give up keg stands and be wicked smart
didnt you say Gus has spent his life preparing for his good will hunting moment and it never arrived? i liked that
 

luka

Well-known member
hanging aroung in bars for Columbia students, chewing a pencil, i'll show them.... they never turn up. theyre in a different bar.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Calm down mate it was a humourous angry face cos you slagged off 'Gone Girl', which you're well within your rights to do.

Ah I think that was an ambiguity in what I wrote - or more honestly I just wrote it badly.

When I wrote

"Also, Ben Affleck did star in Gone Girl, but he also directed Gone Baby Gone, which is actually good"

The "actually" was intended to convey my surprise - he directed a film that was ACTUALLY good. Rather than to mean Gone Baby Gone was actually good, unlike Gone Girl. But yeah, it does read more like the latter. But to clarify, I don't really remember Gone Girl that well but I don't think I loved or hated it really - certainly I did prefer Gone Baby Gone.

And don't worry, I am calm, I knew it must be a misunderstanding of one sort or another. And to be honest, even if it had turned out that you were truly apoplectic with rage due to my underestimation of Aflleck's directing skills then I think I would have been more confused than anything else.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But going back to my question, and it wasn't just a rhetorical flourish or idle wondering - it was really a genuine question in that it's something that I don't have the answer to and so I asked all of you lot, expecting, not perhaps a whole and complete answer, but maybe a little light being shed by those who know more about the whole thing than i do.

What I'm asking is; surely it's not just me who finds it a little surprising that Ben Affleck is capable of directing a film, and a pretty good one at that? When it says "Directed by Ben Affleck" does that mean that he really directed it properly, fully, like when Steven Spielberg does it? Or does it mean that he had a guy who did all the stuff that directors do but Affleck was his boss? Like when I saw Saul the other day he was telling me about being in the studio with this guy who is a pretty famous producer/dj etc now. I don't really know him, his name is very nondescript but it's like Mark Ronson or something, and Saul was saying that when he "produces" something for someone he comes into the studio with his team and he really just lies on the sofa eating crisps and his engineers just do it.

I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism, I understand that the term Producer is so wide that it could be talking about someone who literally records every drum sound and every other sound so that it sounds like it is supposed to in his vision, and then he puts all of those sounds together to make the record fit his aesthetic. But equally it could be that the producer has the vision of the overall thing and he has more technical guys working for him to do the nuts and bolts of building the individual sounds. Or maybe they are not "more technical" but they are just on a level where he trusts them to be able to get the sounds he wants - the raw materials for the building - while he builds the thing.

So there are lots of things that a person might do as part of the process of recording some sounds and changing them into a record that can be released and be in the charts, and various parts of the job could happen to or happen not to fall under the category of "stuff that a producer does" - so the job itself can be quite varied.

And I guess I'm saying that some people look like they are doing nothing to earn their producer money, but they aren't really doing nothing. But I also have a suspicion that this vagueness does allow the odd person to "produce" a record by doing absolutely fuck all while their servants do it for them and their name is on it. And I wonder if the same can happen with directing, and if so, do you reckon that that is what Ben Affleck did? Or perhaps he just turned out to be a really good director, who can say.
 
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