the town

Displaying a true love of his Boston roots, Ben Affleck directs, acts, and co-writes The Town, a heist drama set in the gentrifying suburb Charlestown. Orchestrated by "The Florist" (Pete Postlethwaite), a group of men take on risky bank robberies throughout the city. One of them, Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), strays from the pack, falling in love with the manager (Rebecca Hall) of a bank they violently robbed. His affair and desire to leave a life of crime creates tension with longtime friend and cohort "Jem" (Jeremy Renner). Meanwhile FBI agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) tries to nab Doug and his crew.

The film works best with the tense, slam-bam action scenes (expertly edited by Dylan Tichenor) but falls flat when centered on Doug's character. Affleck isn't a strong enough thespian to pull off such a complicated person. His courtship of Hall (after aiming AK 47s at her, kidnapping her and making her think she was going to die) is more creepy than touching (though the film strives for this, particularly in a gooey final act). Their relationship often strains credulity. It might have been a better picture had Affleck traded places with Renner. The electrifying Hurt Locker star infuses life into a thankless role. Between the elaborate, noisy heists, the script attempts a back story for Doug. A jail/telephone scene with Chris Cooper as Doug's father and a monologue where an expressionless Affleck describes his mother abandoning him--whilst in "Underoos"--are particularly unmoving. The Town boasts a great supporting cast but their parts are so underwritten they seem like throwaways. Blake Lively does her best to shed glossy Gossip Girl character as Jem's drug addicted sister, but really, her scenes could have been cut without much effect on the film except making it snappier. And Jon Hamm really needs a part where he can display some range. In Howl, we have Don Draper, the lawyer. In The Town, Don Draper, the FBI agent. Lovers of crime pictures may like this one more than I did (it's a box office hit with rave reviews to boot) but with such a flat actor at the helm, I found it particularly lacking in emotional resonance, especially when compared to morally ambiguous Bostonian films in similar vein: the shattering Departed and Eastwood's Mystic River.


-Jeffery Berg

howl

In 1957, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and charged for obscenity for publishing Allen Ginsberg's revolutionary poem Howl which references sexuality and drug use among other topical taboos of the era. In the film Howl, Judge Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban) remarks "...life is not encased in one formula whereby everyone acts the same and conforms to a particular pattern." Directors Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman eschew straight narrative for a disjointed docu-styled one lensed in varying stocks which ultimately becomes repetitive. The movie is a cyclical wash of black and white scenes of Ginsberg (James Franco) reading Howl, a blandly-realized obscenity trial (with an unfortunately-cast Jon Hamm as the lead defense attorney with no back story, constantly relying on all of his raised-eyebrow Don Draper expressions of surprise), tape-recorded interview scenes of Ginsberg, very literal Eric Drooker art montage translations, and of stray scenes that attempt to piece together some sort of biography. The jumbling of all of this seems to achieve something akin to what the directors believe is poetic.


Epstein and Friedman are such incredibly important filmmakers; their exceptional documentaries (Word is Out, The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, and The Celluloid Closet among their works) have been both influential and part of the national dialogue on homosexuality. It's because of how much I admire them and how important I believe the subject matter at hand to be that I feel a bit bad for thinking their Howl doesn't do enough. The conversation that Ginsberg's landmark poem has with this film is often an interesting one, especially when the text is spoken by contrasting voices (lawyers and Ginsberg himself). Edward Lachman, a great cinematographer, is able to seamlessly capture many different tones as he did so well with on the similarly-styled I'm Not There.. But the film often feels like a batch of missed opportunities: I yearned more for dialogue from Neal Cassady (Jon Prescot), Peter Orlovsky (Aaron Tveit), Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers) and company. James Franco is so compelling as Allen Ginsberg that it's a shame that Howl fails him so often. Surrounded by flat characters, Franco rises above everyone with the little bits the film gives him and carves out an eloquent, real and fascinating performance. He matches Ginsberg's cadences as well. This makes Howl a sometimes lovely tribute but an incomplete one.

mad threads

Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant discusses and previews the wardrobe for Season 4. So exciting!

man's man

In the new issue of W, I love this quote from Jon Hamm on manhood:

"I was raised by a single mother. I think the definition of a man’s man has shifted in recent times to this sort of fratty bro, different from the older version, which was aloof and distant—Gary Cooper or Cary Grant or James Bond. Now it’s a little vulgar, kind of lowbrow, adolescent. I’m not that guy. Part of being an adult is treating women like women."






Photographs by Nathaniel Goldberg