2007 - GONE BABY GONE, a good adaptation of a book for a change

In Boston, a four year old girl has vanished .  Along with the police, two private investigators are on the case attempting to trace the whereabouts of the child.  As the investigators get more involved in the search, it appears that the situation is a lot more complicated than they imagined.

The director and co-writer of this film is the actor Ben Affleck.  Affleck is a smart talented guy and in this film his storytelling skills are excellent.  Affleck has done a good job keeping the story straight while balancing all the subplots.

  

Affleck has a very talented group of actors to work with, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Amy Ryan, Amy Madigan, Titus Welliver and Michelle Monaghan.  The surprise in this film was Ben Affleck casting his brother Casey Affleck.  He gives a very good performance as one of the private investigators who has to make some difficult decisions during this investigation.

Ben Affleck does a good job capturing a side of Boston that tourists probably never see, the blue collar neighborhoods of the city.  Frankly it's good to see a well made film like Gone Baby Gone that has some substance to it instead of the usual big budget drivel that comes out of Hollywood.

Written by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, the running time is 114 minutes.

2012 - ARGO, a good thriller.

I'll jump on the Argo bandwagon, this is a very good thriller.  There has been some whining about the liberties that have been taken with the true story of some Americans trapped in Iran during the revolution, but the credit at the beginning of the film does say "based on a true story."

Affleck and his production team paid good attention to period detail and casting.  Affleck's the star but he's smart enough to let the rest of his cast do their thing.  John Goodman as makeup expert John Chambers and Alan Arkin in particular really seem to be having fun as Hollywood talent hired by the CIA to get the hostages out, it's just another bad Hollywood production for them.

This is a well constructed film that manages to mix excitement, humor and suspense something Hitchcock was very adept at doing in his Paramount films although Affleck is no Hitchcock.
Still, this is a very well directed film.

Makeup artist John Chambers sounds like a real character, not only was he occasionally working for the CIA, he also created Spock's ears for Star Trek, the makeup for the Munsters and those crazy masks for The List of Adrian Messenger.

120 minutes, written by Chris Terrio.