The Town review

 Number 729 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ben Affleck's crime-drama 'The Town.'

As well as directing, Ben Affleck stars as Douglas "Doug" Macray, a bank-robber who is looking to go straight. After his latest heist goes wrong, where his crew Jeremy "Jem" Coughlin (Jeremy Renner,) Albert "Gloansy" Macgloan (Slaine) and Desmond "Dez" Elden (Owen Burke) take bank manager Clare Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage before releasing her later, Doug begins keeping track of her. The two eventually fall in love. But for Doug to escape the life completely, he has to do one last job as ordered by local crime boss Fergus "Fergie" Colm (Pete Poselthwaite.)

What followed was a largely generic and banal action-thriller spearheaded by a largely wooden performance by Ben Affleck. Since starting this list, I've seen him in a few films, like Argo, which he also directed. And I would argue he is better as a director than an actor. It doesn't matter whether the role is a rough-round-the-edges hero or a bad boy turning good, he isn't very expressive. He just always seems to have a permanent scowl on his face. And there isn't a whole lot of emotion there. There are plenty of emotional scenes, or scenes that should be emotional, but Affleck couldn't really carry them off.  And since I wasn't invested in him as a character, I wasn't really invested in the storyline. Although he was nominated for Best Actor Bafta for his role in Argo, so what do I know? 

Affleck's lack of chemistry with Rebecca Hall didn't do much to help things either. Also a brief note on Rebecca Hall's accent. What was up with that? She's English, but at times it sounded like she was switching back and forth between English and Bostonian.

Much more convincing was Jeremy Renner. He plays Doug's childhood best friend and fellow bank-robber Jem Coughlin. Unlike his friend, he has no desires of leaving the life behind which sets up some nice conflict between the two. Renner was far more charismatic to watch and his storyline was more compelling. And it's a shame Poselthwaite was so under-used. He's a great actor so he should have had a far greater screen-presence. 

This wasn't a film I enjoyed very much if you didn't already guess. Sure it was watchable enough, but Affleck's wooden performance stopped it from achieving any true greatness in my eyes. 

Annie Hall Review

 Number 177 on the top 1000 films of all time is Woody Allen's romantic comedy-drama Annie Hall.

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is a neurotic, Jewish comedian living in New York. Having always been unsuccessful with women, he thinks he's struck gold with the titular Annie Hall (Diane Keaton.) But when that relationship inevitably fails, he spends the whole film wondering why.

 Generally regarded as Woody Allen's greatest film and one of the greatest comedies of all time, Annie Hall didn't particularly tickle my funny bone. Sure there were lots of clever use of meta-humour and fourth-wall breaks which were comical, but the entire film set like a set-up for a joke. I was waiting and waiting for a punchline that never arrived. I was chuckling throughout, but never rolling in the aisles, so to speak. Perhaps this is due to Woody Allen's comedic style. I'm not particularly familiar with his work, but I've read that Allen's stand-up, rather than following the conventional set up and punchline, was more of a rambling monologue.

And perhaps this is why the film didn't quite land with me. It was more of a series of comical vignettes that roughly match up as opposed to a cohesive narrative. I imagine that was intentional but it still made the film very fragmented. Furthermore, in Allen's comedy he usually plays the character of the neurotic Jewish man, which is what we see here. While this could potentially be comedic gold, and his cynical mindset elicited a few laughs, the character did start to grate on me after a while.

This isn't to say that I disliked the whole film. I did enjoy the meta-humour from Alvy's asides to the audience to the subtitles highlighting Alvy's and Annie's hidden feelings behind their shared smalltalk to when Alvy brings out the real-life Marshall Mcluhan to confront a loud-mouthed moviegoer with controversial opinions about his filmography. Diane Keaton played Annie Hall with a sympathy that made her more likeable than Alv. Her character was very much the polar opposite of him - spontaneous, optimistic and happy-go-lucky which was a refreshing change to Alv's pessimism.

And the supporting cast were great as well. Paul Simon gave a good turn as an actor, Shelley Duvall was great as usual and as always Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Walken were delightfully over the top. I still maintain that The Deer Hunter was Walken's best film as he is the most human there. In a lot of his other roles, he's just playing an inflated caraicture of himself.

While Annie Hall was funny in places with an Oscar-winning performance from Diane Keaton, there was just too much set-up and not enough punchline. As they say, good comedy is all in the delivery, and for me, the delivery just wasn't there.