Review: The Town

If Gigli was the worst thing to happen to Ben Affleck's career, then The Town is the best.

The Wire by way of Heat, Affleck's second directorial offering is an astonishing film, one that absolutely confirms him as one of the most exciting new Director's working today. Gone Baby Gone, by it's very premise required a subtle hand. Here Affleck gets a chance to show off a more dynamic skill set. When people talk about his career in years to come they will talk about The Town before they talk about Good Will Hunting.

The Town is set in Charleston, Boston. After the opening text introducing the neighbourhood and it's legacy of bank robbers we are treated to a blistering raid on one such bank, which culminates in the gang, lead by Doug MacRay (Affleck), taking the bank manager Clare Keesey as a temporary hostage. With the robbery a success, and Clare free to aid FBI agent Adam Frawley, Doug decides to tail her in an attempt to suss out how much she knows about her captors.

Comparing The Town to Heat may be a little generous. The Town is no where near as dense or grand as Michael Mann's classic, but the influence is there. For a second film Affleck shows a great deal of confidence, aside from some early use of CCTV footage there are no gimmicks used, just good old fashioned strong, clear direction.

In front of the camera Affleck plays Doug as the crook with a heart of gold, which in all honesty is a little disappointing. Doug is a man who is perpetually surrounded by violence, in fact he was born into it. Seeing him portrayed as such a stand up guy is a little too neat. Giving him a darker side would have added an interesting dynamic to his courtship with Clare. Having said that, Affleck plays him with an earnest sincerity and when it comes time for him to open up (both to Clare and his jailbird father) he manages to flesh out the character successfully. 

Review: The Last Exorcism

The triumph of The Last Exorcism is in it's slight of hand. Showing you something while doing something completely unexpected and then pulling the rug out from under you for good measure.

Don't be fooled by the seen-it-all-before trailer, The Last Exorcism is an incredibly effective horror.

Louisiana born Reverend Cotton Marcus is an evangelical minister who doesn't believe in God. He is a good minister and a good man but his faith has slipped away from him. When his young son became ill, it wasn't prayer that healed him but medicine, so he turned to science and his belief in a higher power began to wane. His faith was shaken further when he read the story of young boy who died while priests performed a staged exorcism on him, an exorcism just like the ones Marcus used to perform himself. With his faith in both God and his clergy in ruins he enlists the help of a film producer to expose the bogus exorcisms by visiting the home of Nell Sweetzer an allegedly possessed teenage girl.

These days the found footage/mockumentary genre is beginning to feel old hat. Gone are the days when a film like The Blair Witch Project could explode into the mainstream and really make it's audience question what they were seeing. Even in the best examples the same cracks in the logic pop up. In addition to the typical "Why would you keep filming that?" question director Daniel Stamm doesn't really commit to the tool he has chosen. The trio only have one camera, for example, but often a conversation has multiple perspectives shot from different angles. The film uses a score which, again undercuts the idea that this is "found" footage. It would be very interesting to see this film again without the score, there are certain moments that I honestly think would have worked even better without the shrieking violin telling you to jump. It doesn't detract from the film, but it feels like a definite decision made early in pre-prodution would have yielded a stronger result.