Comments on: Bullseye

By: alex

alex — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:57:19 +0000

Okay turn in Boiler Room. I thought he was not too bad in Reindeer Games, but you'd have to check with the other eight people who actually saw that film in order to be sure.

By: Daragh McDowell

Daragh McDowell — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 04:02:52 +0000

Affleck and Lopez are truly a match made in heaven. Both made their start doing interesting, good, smallish flicks with interesting parts (Lopez: Out of Sight, U-Turn, Affleck: Good Will Hunting, The Kevin Smith movies) and gave solid performances. Lopez then sold out to pursue a nauseating pop career, and do multi-million dollar shite like the Wedding Planner and Gigli, while Affleck went on to date her and do likewise. Both of them sacrificed artistic integrity (with reasonable money) for plastic fantastic hollywood fame, with an inevitable nosedive in the quality of their work. Their merits as actors have nothing to do with it. Its the essential soullessness of their character. And Dogma was pretty cool IMHO.

By: KevinNYC

KevinNYC — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:22:10 +0000

Ben Affleck always was and always will be a terrible, horrible actor. I remember when I saw Chasing Amy and thought, too bad they didn’t have a big enough budget to attract a decent actor. I was amazed when I found out he was getting other parts after that movie. The best you can say about his acting is that he is good in certain, limited roles like the one he played in Boiler Room. But an angry, agressive, macho guy is quite simply the easiest role for a male actor to play. Beginning acting classes actually have exercises designed to help men play other types of roles. So anyway, I went and saw Gigli last night. Truly a misguided film. Parts had great camp value, but parts were just tedious. Ben Affleck was required to hold several minutes of screen time all by himself and several minutes acting opposite a “retard” character who has some unspecified “brain damage” and acts alternately like an Tourette’s victim, an autistic, a la Rain main, and a schizophrenic when he is not just a plot device or rapping “old school.” It’s painful to watch Affleck. He is just simply not up to the task. I suppose the intention of the scene was suppossed to have some comedic charm, but it’s not there on the screen. My girlfriend asked me, “Do you think any actor could have done something with this script?” Probably not, the script’s pretty bad, but it almost seemed designed to show off Affleck’s weakness. Of course by the end of the movie the lesbian hitwoman has fallen for him.

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:12:56 +0000

I wonder if one thing that’s going on might be ensemble films vs. him trying to carry a film. For instance I thought Ocean’s Eleven got better performances out of Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and possibly George Clooney than anything else I’d seen any of them in recently, and several of these comments have pointed to Ben Affleck’s smaller roles as his more convincing ones. I do think he was intentionally wooden in Shakespeare in Love; I thought he was good in Good Will Hunting; he has done well in Kevin Smith movies; whatever you think of Boiler Room he was effective at his part in that. Maybe this just means that he’s not good enough to sustain it, but maybe it’s something about the type of role.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 23:41:25 +0000

I think the problem comes because Affleck has been defined as a ‘star’ so he only gets the ‘rather straight, square-jawed, leading man roles’ when he’s actually better playing losers and bad guys – his best bits in Dogma are at the end, when he’s gone mad and he’s also quite good as the bad guy in Mallrats, so perhaps it’s a Kevin Smith thing. He was good in Changing Lanes as well, but again I think that’s because he’s playing up the most annoying parts of the preppy persona. And to completely lower the tone, his ‘appearance’ in South Park was rather good.

By: Shai

Shai — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 22:42:09 +0000

I agree with william. Changing Lanes wasn't that bad even if Affleck was playing Affleck. And I think it's an overstatement for nick to say that "Matt Damon is to acting what concrete boots are to buoyancy". I thought he was quite good in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Of course there's a lot of subjectivity in this kind of judgement. For example, a friend recently told me that Chopin's Nocturnes were nowhere near as good as Bach's "Prelude in B minor". I listened to it and hated it.

By: chuck

chuck — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:41:45 +0000

I’m guessing (hoping?) the “Casablanca” rumor is just smoke. It seems to have faded from public discussions, and there’s no reference to it on IMDB (usually a good barometer for these things).

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:42:15 +0000

Me, I live in a state of happy ignorance with regards to the acting talents of both Ben Affleck and his amanuensis J-Lo. I have never to my knowledge seen either one of them on celulloid or in person; I have no plan to change that state of being unless the rumor I heard that they two are filming a remake of Casablanca proves to be true; I think such a thing would be just about too absurd to pass up even at the expense of my cherished Affleck-virginity.

By: Tom Runnacles

Tom Runnacles — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:35:45 +0000

I seem to remember getting into a rather bitter argument about whether Affleck’s little turn in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ was deliberately and intentionally wooden (I think he was playing a thesp), or that simply being the way he ‘acts’.

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:53:07 +0000

He had one good scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which since I agree that he was decent in Dogma leads me to have hope for Jersey Girl. Not much, but a little.

By: chuck

chuck — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:50:37 +0000

Guess I’m the excpetion here, but I really liked Dogma, largely in spite of Affleck. I do think he was the worst part of Dazed and Confused, playing the sadistic, pathetic guy who intentionally fails to graduate so he can paddle and abuse freshmen two years in a row. It’s actually not a bad role for him, playing someone who is “kind of a joke.”

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:32:10 +0000

Boiler Room was the unthinking man's Wall Street. Crap from start to finish. I loved it.

By: JW

JW — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:07:43 +0000

I agree with Jack’s (what I take to be a) suggestion: his small role in Boiler Room was terrific. Of course, he’s playing a smarmy a-hole, so maybe this is, ah, not inconsistent with the general line of argument being developed here…. (Vin Diesel was surprisingly good in that movie, too.)

By: Maria

Maria — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:11:15 +0000

David Mamet lite. yeugh!

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:59:17 +0000

The Boiler Room?