Undead Anonymous

I’ve always found owls to be a little spooky and disconcerting. Never mind that they can go all Linda Blair with the head spinning around (minus the projectile vomiting of pea soup), but they’re kind of creepy, sitting there and staring, asking their incessant question, looking like a creature from another planet.

It didn’t help when I saw the previews for the alien abduction film The Fourth Kind, which I never saw but which is enough to convince me that owls are plotting their next human anal probe.

Now there’s the animated film Legend of the Guardians, which I find completely disturbing on an entirely new level, since these owls are actually talking and plotting and thinking. I don’t want owls to be thinking. I already know what they’re thinking. And it’s not in my best interests. I mean, look at these three. Do they look like they’re up to any good?

Oh, and we can’t forget about Bubo, the golden, mechanical owl from the original Clash of the Titans. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look like a mentally stable robot owl to me.

So when it comes to mechanical, animated, anthropomorphic, alien abducting owls, count me out.

But if you’re talking about crime films set in Boston, MA, and starring a talented actor, writer, and director, then count me in. Yes, there’s a new man crush in town (sorry Bradley Cooper) and his name is Ben Affleck.

Okay, I realize Ben’s been around a while. I first saw him in Chasing Amy and later in Dazed and Confused (even though Dazed had come out a few years earlier). And then came Good Will Hunting and Dogma, which I absolutely loved – both the films and his roles in them.

But beginning in 1999, there came a run of films that I found, well, less than memorable:

Reindeer Games. Bounce. Pearl Harbor.
Jersey Girl. Paycheck. Daredevil.

Gigli.

But then came his portrayal of George Reeves in Hollywoodland (2006) and everything he’s been in since then has been man-crush worthy – if not the films themselves, most definitely his parts in them.

Supporting roles in Smokin’ Aces, Extract, and He’s Just Not That Into You were solid, along with a leading role in State of Play. In 2007, he made his directorial debut with (and co-wrote) the excellent Gone Baby Gone. And now, not only the leading role in The Town, but also co-writer for the adapted screenplay as well as director.

From the acting to the writing to the story to the directing, The Town was one of the best films I’ve seen this year. And more than that, you can now count Ben Affleck as one of the handful of directors whose films I will go see simply because he’s the one behind the camera.