Tag: michellemonaghan

Gone Baby Gone

~ Mark

Gone Baby Gone. Second viewing (I like my first write-up). One thing I hate in this movie is how a disfigured villain character distances us. Seems like kind of a weasel move. You see similar in True Detective, which also really bothered me. So much of the series lingers in mundane evil and violence, and then… the final villains are freakshows. Lame. I suppose it’s a bit different here with the denouement, but the earlier raid still gets under my skin.

Mission: Impossible 3

~ Mark

Mission: Impossible 3. Better than I remembered. Hoffman is casually one of the most terrifying villains of the past couple decades. It’s a shame that Keri Russell didn’t have a larger role. Current Mission: Impossible rankings:

  1. Mission: Impossible
  2. Mission: Impossible 3
  3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
  4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
  5. Mission: Impossible 2

It seems the rule of thumb here is that the quality of the MI films is inversely proportional to the length of Tom Cruise’s hair.

Gone Baby Gone

~ Mark

Gone Baby Gone. I kinda wish the movie had stopped after the second voiceover. It would have been amazing (if maybe predictable in an ambiguous, artsy way). But it’s a genre film, so it kept going, and while the second, twisty act was a little mystery-novel page-turner-y, Ben Affleck does a great job with it. I assume he was being more or less faithful to the source. Great, great cast. The end offers an interesting tension between Monaghan’s ethic-of-care/consequentialist perspective and Casey Affleck’s ethic-of-justice/deontological take. I also like the sound in this one, working with the full range. I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse than The Town, which I mean as a compliment to both.

Other great movies that are heavy on the Boston: