1. Chasing Amy
Chasing Amy is the obvious place to start, because people seem to have a love/hate relationship with it. Affleck does some of the best work of his early career here. He’s an open wound when he confesses his love to Joey Lauren Adams, but the big gay elephant is always in the room: she’s a lesbian. Yes, Ben makes a lesbian fall in love with him, but is that really more improbable than Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in
The World Is Not Enough? Movies are full of farfetched scenarios and that’s the way we secretly like them.
2. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Kevin Smith does a great job of propping Affleck up as an actor. Here, everyone gamely pokes fun at Ben the actor and Ben the tabloid star by eviscerating pretty much every movie Ben’s ever made that does not appear on this list. Bounce Boy proves he’s self aware enough to let the joke be on him and that definitely doesn’t suck. Though
Reindeer Games totally did. WTF
was that.
3. Gone Baby Gone
It is perhaps not the best sign that Ben Affleck does not appear in the best movie Ben Affleck ever made. But he directed it, and he co-wrote the screenplay, so it still falls in the Affleck Win Column. The film is also not Affleck-less onscreen – little brother Casey does the heavy thespian lifting. There probably won’t be a need for a list of 10 Casey Affleck Movies That Don’t Suck.
4. Armageddon
Here’s where we throw down. Many, many accurate statements can be made about Armageddon being a ridiculous movie (it is) with a faulty premise – but in the end, Armageddon is good fun, and the man love displayed by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck still has the power to make teenage boys uncomfortable, as well as a little teary. And besides, it got Aerosmith their first number one hit of their careers, which repays a huge karmic debt in the grand scheme of things.
5. Dogma
Kevin Smith’s best film to date. It further explores the ongoing bromance of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as they play two fallen angels attempting to murder enough people to earn their gay wedding in a sunny climate. Or possibly pass through a heavenly arch into the Kingdom of Paradise, right under Alanis Morissette’s nose. One or the other.
6. Good Will Hunting
Do you ever think Ben Affleck is secretly bitter Matt Damon played Will Hunting, while Ben played his plucky, loyal friend whose name nobody remembers because it isn’t the title of a movie?
7. Jersey Girl
It’s time to stick up for Jersey Girl. It’s almost universally reviled. But how fair is the hate? Three points in its favor: 1. Jennifer Lopez dies onscreen; 2. George Carlin makes one of the last, sweetest performances of his life; and 3. Will Smith falls on his sword to appear, as Himself, in the only movie he’s ever been in that didn’t make hundreds of millions of dollars (except for
Seven Pounds, but boy is that a whole other list.) It’s a sweet story well told and in twenty year’s time a new generation of movie fans, removed from the bad hype, will back that up. So, meet back here in 20 years, assuming the internet still exists.
8. Hollywoodland
I thought this was a new Superman movie, so my expectations were somewhat skewed. Still, it was a solid drama that rested heavily on Affleck’s shoulders. There’s also a subplot (okay, half the movie) about Adrien Brody that no one cares about. It could have done with a few more space rocks and flying sequences instead, but all in all, not too shabby.
9. The Town
Affleck really stretches his wings by setting another movie he’s written… in Boston. But hey, no one yells at Martin Scorsese when he makes another movie in New York.
The Town is essentially about miserable people being miserable, and then most of them die. Ben lives, but you can tell he’s unhappy and tortured because he has a beard. There’s a really cool car chase and a lot of complexities about how we become stuck in our lives, powerless to change them. However, a word of caution: you will not be able to stop talking in that wicked cool Bah-stan accent for days afterward.
10. Shakespeare in Love
I’ll be honest. I don’t really remember much of Ben’s performance. I know he’s playing an actor in the production of “Romeo and Juliet.” I’m fairly certain he’s wearing tights and a cod piece at the time. And he was dating Gwyneth Paltrow, who stars. Look, the point is, this is a great movie that most certainly does not suck, and Ben Affleck is in it. Judi Dench won a supporting actress Oscar for a similar amount of screen time. Ben was tragically not nominated.
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