Claire (Rebecca Hall) and Doug (Ben Affleck) have a complicated relationship in THE TOWN
THE TOWN (Ben Affleck, 2010)
Pier 63 Lawn, Hudson River Park
Cross at West 22nd or 24th St.
Wednesday, August 17, free, 8:30
www.hudsonriverpark.org
www.thetownmovie.warnerbros.com
Ben Affleck, who displayed great skill as a director in his debut feature, 2007’s Gone, Baby, Gone, has done it again with his follow-up, the romantic thriller The Town. Affleck, who also cowrote the script, stars as Doug MacRay, the leader of a small group of bank robbers in tough Charlestown, Massachusetts, the bank robbery capital of America. As the film opens, the thieves are just hitting a bank and are forced to take a hostage, manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). After later letting her go unharmed, they soon realize that she lives in their neighborhood and might be able to recognize one of them, so Doug starts hanging around her, pretending to be interested in her so he can tap her for information. Meanwhile, Boston cop Dino (Titus Welliver) and FBI Special Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) are getting closer to the gang, who continue to pull off daring heists regardless of the heat on them. Although there are a handful of plot holes you could drive an armored truck through, The Town ends up being a compelling action film and love story, with car chases, massive shootouts, and a tender relationship as Doug begins to fall for Claire, and vice versa, even though the truth threatens to blow everything apart. Also threatening to blow everything apart is Doug’s right-hand man, Jem (Jeremy Renner, channeling James Cagney in White Heat), who likes hurting and killing way too much. Affleck, who as a director allows his actors a large amount of freedom, has gotten fine performances across the board; the cast also includes Pete Postlethwaite as an underworld florist, Chris Cooper as Doug’s long-incarcerated father, Blake Lively as a drug-dealing tramp, and Boston rapper Slaine, who contributed songs to the soundtrack as well. The film, based on the Chuck Hogan novel Prince of Thieves, also benefits from Affleck’s genuine affection for the place where he grew up, shooting on location and setting the finale in a world-famous landmark. The Town is screening August 17 in Hudson River Park as the last entry in the free Wednesday night RiverFlicks for Grown-ups series, with free popcorn. For a complete list of free outdoor summer films throughout the city, click here.
Warner Bros. and First National brought out the big guns for their 1941 gangster picture High Sierra, with Raoul Walsh directing a script by W. R. Burnett (Little Caesar) and John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. Bogart (the part had been previously been offered to George Raft and Paul Muni) plays hardcore criminal Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, called in the trailer “the strangest of men in the strangest of stories,” recently released from prison and already caught up in a casino heist. He is joined by Louis (Cornel Wilde), Red (Arthur Kennedy) and Babe (Alan Curtis), with Babe having brought along femme fatale Marie (Lupino), who Roy knows is going to be trouble — with a capital T. Meanwhile, Roy has fallen for Velma (Joan Leslie), a pure and innocent young woman with a medical problem Roy is generously trying to help cure. He’s also taken a liking to a mutt, revealing that he might actually have a softer side in there somewhere. But when things don’t quite go as planned, Roy finds himself on the run, heading toward the Sierra Nevadas, willing to do whatever it takes to get away from the police, who are hot on his trail. Bogart gives one of his finest performances as the Dillinger-esque Earle, continually offering just the slightest twist on his character, adding depth not always found in murderous gangsters. Barring inclement weather, High Sierra is screening Monday night as part of the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival; the series concludes August 22 with the Clint Eastwood cop classic Dirty Harry.
As America slowly recovered from the Great Depression and headed toward the Second World War, Charlie Chaplin also found himself trapped between the past and the future. Talkies had started in 1927 with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, but the British-born actor, writer, director, producer, and composer had not crossed over yet, still favoring the silent cinema that had made him an international star. But his 1936 masterpiece, Modern Times, tackled the coming of the modern era in myriad ways, both public and personal, in the world at large as well as in cinema itself. Chaplin stars as an assembly line worker who literally gets caught up in the cogs of machinery, suffers a nervous breakdown, gets sent to prison for leading a Communist march he was not a part of, accidentally dabbles in a little nose candy, and falls in love with a homeless gamin who lives by her wits on the docks, played by his real-life lover, Paulette Goddard. He tries to fit in to the ever-changing society, without much luck; he even has trouble getting himself arrested again, thinking that jail is a better option than what’s out there. The unemployed former factory worker and the gamin move into a run-down shack and try to pretend that they are a happy, successful married couple, but the harsh reality of their poor existence continually thwarts them. Modern Times is a brutally funny, honest, and insightful examination of the socioeconomic conditions of America in the 1930s. As corporations began to grow, workers became nameless automatons; in fact, neither of the film’s protagonists is given a name. For the first time, Chaplin uses sound, but always in ingenious ways: the factory owner, who watches his workers like a hawk, using surveillance cameras that are remarkably prescient, talks only via a screen as he yells at his employees; music, which Chaplin previously utilized only on the backing soundtrack, now comes from bands seen on camera, as if they’re playing live; and the Little Tramp himself gets into the act as a singing waiter, although it’s not exactly like Garbo breaking her on-screen silence. Chaplin’s choice to include some sound while still avoiding even a single strand of actual dialogue between characters is a brash commentary on the technological revolution that was taking hold of the country and, of course, impacting the film industry. Chaplin’s previous movie, the 1931 classic City Lights, was a more traditional silent film, but with his next work, 1940’s The Great Dictator, he finally made the transition to a full talkie, albeit still finding himself trapped between two worlds, playing both a poor ghetto barber and the Fascist Hitler-like leader of Tomania. Modern Times is screening August 13 and 21 as part of Symphony Space’s “Chaplin” series, which is presenting many of his works on the big screen in HD for the first time ever, which is rather ironic, especially in the case of Modern Times; the series continues with such films as Monsieur Verdoux on August 14, The Great Dictator and City Lights on August 21, The Circus on August 27, and Limelight offering a fitting conclusion on August 28.