The Accountant (2016)
DIRECTOR: Gavin O’Connor
CAST: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor, Jean Smart
REVIEW:
The Accountant is a curiously inert thriller mixed with a character study, or perhaps, as some have called it, a character study masquerading as a thriller. A perfunctory attempt at portraying the symptoms of a character with high-functioning autism/Asperger’s (the movie is slightly vague about his specific diagnosis) gives way to a generic shoot-em-up. An unneccessarily convoluted narrative structure—featuring flashbacks to several different time periods in the main character’s life, myriad superfluous subplots and extraneous supporting characters—serves only to muddy the waters and disguise the fact that, when all is said and done, there wasn’t that much to it. For a movie centering on a man of simplistic single-minded purpose, The Accountant seems desperate to convince us it’s more complex than it actually is. Continue reading
Pearl Harbor (2001)
DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
CAST: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, Tom Sizemore, Cuba Gooding Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Mako
REVIEW:
Pearl Harbor is intended to be a crowd pleaser, combining a wartime historical backdrop to rouse patriotic American audiences flocking to the theater with one of those melodramatic wartime love stories from the 1950s or 1960s. Considering it’s a product of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, it also features lots of splashy special effects, “dramatic” slow-motion shots, cheesy one-liners, corny “patriotic” speeches, over-the-top flag-waving, and stuff blowing up real good. When it comes to the centerpiece depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack, the $135 million budget is all over the screen. It’s a pity a little more effort couldn’t have been spent on the script. Also, that centerpiece sequence only occupies about 35 minutes of a bloated 183 minute “epic” runtime.
Continue readingGood Will Hunting (1997)
DIRECTOR: Gus Van Sant
CAST: Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgard, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Cole Hauser
REVIEW:
Good Will Hunting could be summed up as an ordinary story well-told, but that verges on an oversimplification of what a difference a strong script, strong direction, and a strong cast can make. On its most basic level, it’s a formulaic coming-of-age narrative about a self-destructive young man and the friends he makes along the way who pull him back from the edge and help him recognize his own potential, and could have easily become mawkish and saccharine. But Good Will Hunting uses an edge to avoid excessive sappiness (even if it’s ultimately a “feel good” experience) and an intelligently-written script (by co-stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who took home Oscar gold for Best Screenplay), Gus Van Sant’s direction which culls genuine emotion from his actors, and a surfeit of strong performances (including one that gained Robin Williams an Oscar, and nominations for Damon and Minnie Driver) turns what could have been generic and formulaic into a powerful and affecting drama.
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